We currently have two methods to indicate that a question should be improved or removed¹:

Close votes: Non-anonymous, some feedback, independent from upvotes, can all be removed at once ("reopen"), fixed limit (5 users or 1 dupe hammer).

Downvotes: Anonymous, no detailed feedback, offset by upvotes, cannot all be removed at once.

There are currently a lot of active discussions concerning these two methods, some of them proposing to take a feature from one of the two systems and add it to the other one, like revoking downvotes when a question is reopened, or adding a feedback option to downvotes:

I thought about proposing to merge those two systems, but before I do that, I would like to understand what the advantages of the current system are. Is it just a historical artifact or a conscious design decision with a good reason behind it?

(Feel free to close this as a duplicate, if it has been asked before. The closest questions I could find are this one and that one, but they mostly agree that they are similar, explain the difference in actual usage, and do not explain the advantage these two systems have over a single, unified system.)

Speaking as a software developer: keeping the system DRY by removing redundancy is an idea worth investigating. Downvotes and closevotes often do go hand in hand, though not always.
– deceze♦May 2 '18 at 12:12

5

These systems aren't mutually exclusive, not does one imply the other. They're in no way similar. Close-votes mean that the question should be closed. Downvotes mean that the question is of low quality, an answer is wrong, or not useful for somee other reason, but it doesn't need to be closed.
– CerbrusMay 2 '18 at 12:12

2

There is also the option to flag, and there is also the option to delete vote, by the way. All with different purposes and intents and none accessible by exactly the same group of people.
– GimbyMay 2 '18 at 12:16

1 Answer
1

We currently have two methods to indicate that a question should be improved or removed¹:

No, we don't. We have two methods that indicate two entirely separate things towards two entirely distinct purposes.

Downvotes are about expressing the quality of the post to other people. Not to the person making the post, but to anyone who might think about reading it or following its advice.

Close votes are about shutting down inappropriate questions.

These are not the same thing. There are plenty of questions worthy of downvotes which are not close-worthy. They're on-topic, clear, etc. They just do something unpleasant or don't show research effort. There are plenty of close-worthy questions that show research. Too-broad questions can be well-researched, but simply have too big of a scope for the site.

One can argue that a closable post by its nature demonstrates poor research. If the poster had done their research, they would have realized that the question was off-topic, too broad, unclear, or primarily opinion-based.
– Robert ColumbiaMay 2 '18 at 15:20

@RobertColumbia: One could also argue that different people have different ideas as to what is "primarily opinion-based" or "too broad". As such, one can assume good faith in these cases and not downvote simply because they're operating with a different set of values and perspectives.
– Nicol BolasMay 2 '18 at 15:21